Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The newest proposed version of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act—dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act—is almost over the
congressional finish line, with votes in both chambers of Congress
imminent.

So how would accountability work under the ESSA, if approved? And how
does it compare to No Child Left Behind Act, Classic Edition, and the
Obama administration's waivers?

Your cheat sheet here.
Top-line stuff on accountability first, then some early reaction.
Scroll down further if you want the nitty-gritty details on
accountability.

And scroll down even further if you want more details on other
aspects of the deal (an update of past Politics K-12 cheat sheets,
including some new information on which programs made it into the
agreement and which are on the chopping block, thanks to this helpful fact sheet from the Committee for Education Funding).

The top-line stuff: The ESSA is in many ways a U-turn from the current, much-maligned version of the ESEA law, the No Child Left Behind Act.

•States would still have to test students in reading and math in
grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, and break out the data for
whole schools, plus different "subgroups" of students (English-learners,
students in special education, racial minorities, those in poverty.)But beyond that, states get wide
discretion in setting goals, figuring out just what to hold schools and
districts accountable for, and deciding how to intervene in
low-performing schools. And while tests still have to be a part of state
accountability systems, states must incorporate other factors that get
at students' opportunity to learn, like school-climate and teacher
engagement, or access to and success in advanced coursework.

And, in a big switch from the waivers, there would be no role for the feds whatsoever in teacher evaluation.
• States and districts will have to use locally-developed,
evidence-based interventions though, in the bottom 5 percent of schools
and in schools where less than two-thirds of students graduate. States
must also flag for districts schools where subgroup students are
chronically struggling. The School Improvement Grant program is gone,
but there are resources in the bill states can use for turnarounds.

The deal goes further on accountability than either the House- or Senate-passed legislation. And, in a win for civil rights groups, it appears there are no more so-called supersubgroups.
That's a statistical technique in the waivers that allowed states to
combine different categories of students for accountability purposes.

There are definitely some "guardrails" as one of the bill's sponsors,
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would say. (More on just what those are
below.) But the education secretary's authority is also very limited,
especially when it comes to interfering with state decisionmaking on
testing, standards, school turnarounds, and more.

So there's some real ambiguity here. That will be something to watch going forward.
It's still unclear just how the accountability or "guardrails"
provisions of the bill vs. limits on secretarial authority dynamic will
play out in regulation, implementation, and any federal monitoring. But it's possible lawyers and lobbyists may have walked away as big winners here. (Even Democratic and Republican aides see certain aspects of the bill differently.)

Put another way, there are
definitely provisions in this deal that state and district leaders and
civil rights advocates can cite to show that states and schools will
have to continue to ensure equity. But, it will be hard for the U.S.
Department of Education to implement those provisions with a very heavy
hand, without at least the threat of lawsuits.

"What can the secretary do and not do? I think that's where the lawsuits will be,"
said Chad Aldeman, an associate partner at Bellwether Education, who
served in the U.S. Department of Education under President Barack Obama.

Early Reaction

Civil rights groups say they're waiting for real, live legislative language, not just a framework, before weighing in.

But some state chiefs say there's no way that's happening. After all, it didn't under the NCLB waivers.
"I'm bothered when I hear people say that school chiefs won't hold schools accountable," said Brenda Cassellius, Minnesota's education chief.
"That's not been evident with the waivers. ... We've supported our
schools and we've held them accountable. I hope America can see that."The nitty-gritty details on accountability, based on an analysis of a late-stage version of the framework:

Plans: States would still have to submit accountability plans to the education department. These
new ESSA plans would start in the 2017-18 school year. And a state
could get a hearing if the department turned down its plan.

Goals:

No more expectation that states get all students to proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, as under NCLB Classic. (That ship has sailed, anyway). And no more menu of goals, largely cooked up by the department, as under the waivers.

Instead, states can pick their own
goals, both a big long-term goal, and smaller, interim goals. These
goals must address: proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency,
and graduation rates.

Goals have to set an expectation that groups that are furthest behind close gaps.

What kinds of schools will states have to focus on?

States have to identify and
intervene in the bottom 5 percent of performers, an idea borrowed from
waivers. These schools have to be identified at least once every three
years. (That's something many states already do under waivers. And some,
like Massachusetts, do it every single year.)

States have to identify and intervene in high schools where the graduation rate is 67 percent or less.

States, with districts, have to identify schools where subgroup students are struggling.

What do these accountability systems have to consider? The list of "indicators" is a little different for elementary and middle schools vs. high schools.

Systems for Elementary and Middle Schools:

States need to incorporate a jumble of five indicators into their accountability systems.

That includes three academic indicators: proficiency
on state tests, English-language proficiency, plus some other academic
factor that can be broken out by subgroup. (That could be growth on
state tests, so that states would have a mix of both in their systems,
as many already do under waivers.)

States
also have to somehow figure in participation rates on state tests
(schools with less than 95 percent participation are supposed to have
that factored in, somehow.)

And, in a big new twist, states must add at least one, fifth indicator of a very different kind into the mix.
Possibilities include: student engagement, educator engagement, access
to and completion of advanced coursework, post-secondary readiness,
school climate/safety, or whatever else the state thinks makes sense.
Importantly, though, this indicator has to be disaggregated by subgroup.
States are already experimenting with these kinds of indicators under
the waivers, especially a cadre of districts in California (the CORE districts). Still, this is new territory when it comes to accountability.

Systems for high schools:

Basically the same set of indicators, except that graduation rates have to be part of the mix.

So to recap, that means for high
schools: proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, graduation
rates, plus some other indicator that focuses a little more on whether
students have the opportunity to learn, or are ready for post-secondary
work. And also, test participation has to be incorporated in some way.

How much do each of these indicators have to count? It depends
on who you ask. Everyone agrees that those academic indicators (tests,
grad rates, English-language proficiency) have to weigh more, as a
group, than that non-traditional indicator that gets at a students'
opportunity to learn (school climate, etc.)

From there, Democratic and Republicans aides have different takes. A
Republican aide said the academic stuff just has to be at least 51
percent of the system, and the other factor, or factors, can be up to 49
percent. A Democratic aide said the regulations might turn out
differently, when all's said and done. (In this aide's view, the
department could set a range for each individual indicator, ultimately
giving the academic factors as a group significantly greater weight than
the other factors.) More here. It's
also unclear whether the test participation indicator, which states can
weigh however they want, will throw a monkey wrench into all of this.
More here. How do interventions work?

For the bottom 5 percent of schools and for high schools with really high dropout rates:

Districts work with teachers and school staff to come up with an evidence-based plan.

States monitor the turnaround effort.

If schools continue to founder for years (no more than four) the state is supposed to step in with its own plan. That
means states could take over the school if they wanted, or fire the
principal, or turn the school into a charter, just like they do under
NCLB waivers now. (But, importantly, unlike under waivers, there aren't
any musts—states get to decide what kind of action to take.)

Districts could also allow for
public school choice out of seriously low-performing schools, but they
have to give priority to the students who need it most.

For schools where subgroups students are struggling:

Most of these schools have to come
up with an evidence-based plan to help the particular group of kids who
are falling behind. For example, a school that's having trouble with
students in special education could decide to try out a new curriculum
with evidence to back it up and hire a very experienced coach to help
train teachers on it.

Districts monitor these plans. If
the school continues to fall short, the district steps in. The district
decides just when that kind of action is necessary, though; there's no
specified timeline in the deal.

Importantly, there's also a
provision in the deal calling for a "comprehensive improvement plan."
States and districts to take more-aggressive action in schools where
subgroups are chronically underperforming, despite local interventions.
Their performance has to look really bad though, as bad as the
performance of students in the bottom 5 percent of schools over time.

What kind of resources are there for these interventions? The
School Improvement Grant program, which is funded at around $500
million currently, has been consolidated into the bigger Title I pot,
which helps districts educate students in poverty. But states
would be able to set aside up to 7 percent of all their Title I funds
for school turnarounds, up from 4 percent in current law. (That would
give states virtually the same amount of resources for school
improvement as they get now, through SIG.) However, the bulk of those
dollars would be sent out to districts for "innovation", which could
include turnarounds. (More in this cheat sheet from AASA, the School Administrator's Association, which has been updated on this issue.) Bottom line: There
are resources in the bill for school turnarounds. But some of the money
could also be used for other purposes, if that's what districts and
states want. What about the tests? The testing schedule would be the same
as under NCLB. But in a twist, a handful of states could apply to try
out local tests, with the permission of the U.S. Department of
Education. And importantly, these local tests aren't supposed to be used
forever—the point is for districts to experiment with new forms of
assessment (as New Hampshire is doing with performance tasks)
that could eventually go statewide and be used by everyone. That way
states don't get stuck with the same old assessment for years on end.

What's more, the framework allows for the use of local,
nationally-recognized tests at the high school level, with state
permission. So a district could, in theory, use the SAT or ACT as its
high school test, instead of the traditional state exam.Also, computer adaptive testing would be easier. More here. What about that supersubgroup thing mentioned higher up? Supersubgroups
are a statistical technique used in the waivers that call for states to
combine different groups of students (say, students in special
education, English-language learners, and minorities) for accountability
purposes. By my reading of the bill, it would seem that's a no-no.
States now have to consider accountability for each subgroup separately.
States liked the flexibility of supersubgroups. But former Rep. George
Miller, D-Calif., and civil rights groups said they masked gaps. The
deal appears to eliminate the use of supersubgroups.

What about the rest of the bill?

Scroll
down for information on English-Language Learners, students in special
education, school choice, teachers, and funding provisions.

English-Language Learners

Where does deal land when it comes to when newly arrived English-language learners must be tested? (Background on this issue here). States would have two choices.

Option A) Include English-language learners' test scores after they have been in the country a year, just like under current law.

Option B) During the first year, test scores
wouldn't count towards a school's rating, but ELLs would need to take
both of the assessments, and publicly report the results. (That's a
switch from current law. Right now, they only need to take math in the
first year). In the
second year, the state would have to incorporate ELLs' results for both
reading and math, using some measure of growth. And in their third year
in the country, the proficiency scores of newly arrived ELLs are treated
just like any other students'. (Sound familiar? It's very similar to the waiver Florida received.)

The compromise would shift accountability for English-language
learners from Title III (the English-language acquistion section of the
ESEA) to Title I (where everyone else's accountability is). The idea is
to make accountability for those students a priority.

Students in Special Education

The legislation mirrors a recent federal regulation when
it comes to assessments for students in special education, saying,
essentially, that only 1 percent of students overall can be given
alternative tests. (That's about 10 percent of students in special
education.)

Opt-Outs

The bill largely sticks with the Senate language, which would allow states to create their own testing opt-out laws (as Oregon has). But it would maintain the federal requirement for 95 percent participation in
tests. However, unlike under the NCLB law, in which schools with
lower-than-95 percent participation rates were automatically seen as
failures, local districts and states would get to decide what should
happen in schools that miss targets. States would have to take low
testing participation into consideration in their accountability
systems. Just how to do that would be up to them.

The legislation creates a $1.6 billion block grant that consolidates
a bunch of programs, including some involving physical education,
Advanced Placement, school counseling, and education technology. (Some
of these programs haven't federal funding in years.)

Districts that get more than $30,000 will have to spend at least 20
percent of their funding on at least one activity that helps students
become well-rounded, and another 20 percent on at least one activity
that helps kids be safe and healthy. And part of the money could be
spent on technology. (But no more than 15 percent can go to technology
infastructure.)

Some programs would live on as separate line items, including the
21st Century Community schools program, which pays for after-school
programs and has a lot support on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

Other survivors: a wrap-around service program that shares DNA with
both Promise Neighborhoods and a full-service community schools program.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. got the early-childhood investment she
wanted—the bill enshrines an existing program "Preschool Development
Grants" in law, and focuses it on program coordination, quality, and
broadening access to early childhood education. But the program would be
housed at the Department of Health and Human Services, not the
Education Department as some Democrats had initially hoped. The
Education Department would jointly administer the program, however. (The
reason: HHS already has some early-education programs, like Head Start.
Expanding the education department's portfolio was a big no-no for
conservatives.)

That new research and innovation program that some folks were
describing as sort of a next-generation "Investing in Innovation"
program made it into the bill. (Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Michael
Bennet, D-Colo., are big fans, as is the administration.)

On School Choice

No Title I portability: That means that federal funds won't be able to follow the child to the school of their choice.

But the bill does include a pilot project allowing districts to try
out a weighted student funding formula, which would also essentially
function as a backpack of funds for kids. The program would allow 50
districts to combine state, local, and federal funds into a single pot
that could follow a child to the school of their choice. It is said to
be a more workable alternative to Title I portability, which looked more
dramatic on paper, but which few states would likely have taken advantage of because of its complexity,
experts said. Importantly with this pilot, participation would be
entirely up to district officials. And the language would give them a
chance to better target funds to individual school needs.

Teachers

The headline here is that states would no longer have to do teacher
evaluation through student outcomes, as they did under waivers.And
NCLB's "highly qualified teacher" requirement would be officially a
thing of the past.

There's also language allowing for continued spending on the Teacher
Incentive Fund—now called the Teacher and School Leader Innovation
Program—which doles out grants to districts that want to try out
performance pay and other teacher quality improvement measures. And
there are resources for helping train teachers on literacy and STEM. Much more from Teacher Beat.

Funding and Other Issues

No changes to the Title I funding formula along the lines of what the Senate passed
that would steer a greater share of the funds to districts with high
concentrations of students in poverty. But there were some changes to
the Title II formula (which funds teacher quality) that would be a boon
to rural states.

The agreement would keep in place maintenance of effort, a wonky issue we wrote about recently,
with some new flexibility added for states. (Quick tutorial:
Maintenance of effort basically requires states to keep up their own
spending at a particular level in order to tap federal funds.)
There was some chatter that the bill would also incorporate changes
to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. That's not part of the
agreement.

The framework would only "authorize" ESEA for four more years, as
opposed to the typical five. That gives lawmakers a chance to revisit
the policy under the next president, should they choose to do so. And
its overall authorization levels are largely consistent with the most
recent budget deal.

Students and citizens lined Chestnut Street Monday to affirm their
unity in the wake of racial and homophobic slurs and harassment directed
toward Berea College students during homecoming weekend earlier this
month.

The demonstration continued Berea College’s history “of
standing up against racial inequality and seeking social justice for
all,” said Virgil Burnside, a college administrator and former Berea
city councilman. The college was founded as an integrated school in the
1800s by abolitionist John G. Fee.

Demonstrators held “Love over
hate” signs, chanted “This is what democracy looks like!” and sang the
civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” as well as Bill Withers’ 1972
pop song “Lean On Me.” Passing motorists honked horns to express their
support for the crowd.

About 500 demonstrators participated in the
event, said Lavoyed Hudgins, director of the college’s public safety
department. The college has an enrollment of 1,600.

An
administrative committee for the college said incidents of “drive-by
racism and homophobia” were directed to students from roads on campus
during the Nov. 13-14 homecoming weekend. Some students took their
concerns to the Nov. 17 meeting of Berea City Council.

Lyle Roelofs, the college’s ninth president, encouraged students and residents to protest together.

“It
was important that the town and the college together make a statement
against the hateful acts that we have occasionally experienced here,”
Roelofs said. “We think possibly this will deter that kind of thing but
more importantly develop a sense of solidarity among ourselves.”

Asked
how the demonstration could be a deterrent, Roelofs said: “There’s
something about shame, and when a whole community rises up and says ‘We
reject this,’ we hope that has an influence. Of course, one can’t be
sure. We don’t even know the people we’re dealing with.”

Formal
complaints about the harassment have been filed with the Madison County
attorney’s office, said Sgt. Jake Reed, spokesman for the Berea Police
Department. He did not know if any alleged offender has been served a
complaint.

While Monday’s demonstration was in response to recent incidents, slurs are nothing new.
“We
know of incidents every year that happen with our students,” said Sarah
Broomfield, executive administrative assistant in the academic vice
president’s office.

Students who took part in the demonstration told of incidents that have happened to them.

Tamia
Ware, 19, said in an interview that a truck revved its engine as she
crossed at a pedestrian crosswalk. Another time, a truck sped by and a
person yelled out a racial epithet to a group of people standing at the
crosswalk.

“I’m from Alabama, so I’ve had things like this happen
before,” Ware said. “But I wasn’t expecting it here because when I came
to Berea, I was told it was inclusive and that it was diverse.
...Hopefully, it will change.”

Neidy Rodriguez-Hernandez, 19, said
she was surprised by the anti-Hispanic remarks directed to her. She
said that on at least three occasions, while she was working at the
student craft center, comments like “You shouldn’t be here” and “You
don’t belong here” have been directed to her.

Despite these
incidents, “I love Kentucky as a whole. I’m happy to be here,”
Rodriguez-Hernandez said. “There are a lot of flaws everywhere.”

Fortunately,
the college community “has been very supportive and that’s the best
thing we can do, is stick together,” Rodriguez-Hernandez said.

Dayzaughn
Graves, 18, of Richmond, said the incidents in Berea are not comparable
to the racial tensions at the University of Missouri, where the
football team boycotted activities and forced President Tim Wolfe to
resign earlier this month.

“I think that’s stretching it because
that had a lot of racial things happen specifically with that
president,” Graves said. “I think that is what our president was trying
not to do, but to try to say, “I see you all, I do care for you all’ so
it doesn’t escalate to that.”

That Roelofs took a public position
to rally the campus and community “makes me excited and secure in my
choice as a freshman that I chose Berea College,” Graves said. “I’m at a
place where I don’t have to be afraid to go to the administration if I
need something. That’s terribly important.”

If hiring a bunch of folks to tell the Fayette County Board of Education how messed up things are is a "huge step forward," then things must have been a lot worse downtown than I thought. The huge step forward will come - I truly hope - when the performance of district personnel is back up where it belongs. It just seems a bit early for celebration to me.

That said, Caulk and the board are correct to get to the bottom of all of this. Now the question is: Will the board of education get its moneys worth? That would be a monumental day.

In a
huge step forward for the Fayette County Public School, board members
voted this evening to hire national experts to review school district
operations and services. A series of five external
audits are a key lynchpin in Superintendent Manny Caulk’s “Listening,
Learning, and Leading” entry plan, which outlines his first 100 days.

“This
is a monumental day for the Fayette County Public Schools,” Caulk said.
“I applaud the board and district leaders for embracing these objective
external reviews of how the school system
is functioning. Transforming the district requires us to start from a
shared understanding of our strengths and challenges.”

As
part of his plan to assess the state of the district, Caulk asked the
board to invest $600,000 in an overall organizational and structural
review of the district across 10 domains, as well
as audits of the district’s career and technical education program and
services offered for students who have special needs, are learning
English as a second language, or are identified as gifted and talented.

The
Kentucky Department of Education agreed to do the review of district
career and technical offerings at no cost. That review began earlier
this month with School Director Jack Hayes and Program
Manager Kim Lyons coordinating the work with KDE. Contracts were
awarded this evening to Cross & Joftus for a Comprehensive District
Diagnostic, Review and Action Plan, and to Curriculum Management
Solutions, Inc. for audits of the English as a Second Language
program and Gifted and Talented program. Contract costs are still under
negotiation, but the district review will be no more than $198,000, and
the ESL and GT audits will be less than $84,500 each. The special
education audit will be brought to the board for
action on December 3.

To
help with the selection of firms, Caulk gathered input from a wide
variety of stakeholders. More than 45 principals, teachers, district
administrators, parents, and community representatives
served on panels to evaluate the 17 proposals received by companies
interested in conducting the reviews.

“Collaboration
is more than a catch phrase for me,” Caulk said. “The input from so
many different voices strengthened our decision making process and they
should be very proud of their work.
If we want people to take ownership in our schools, we have to include
them every step of the way.”

Reviews
will begin in January. In addition to an equity audit, the Cross &
Joftus review will include an evaluation of the district across 10
domains: operations, finance, human resources, school
management, academics, vision, strategy and culture, organizational
structure and policy, external affairs, data, accountability, research
and evaluation, and central services.

The
firm has identified experts in each area to take the lead on that
section of the review and is also partnering with UPD Consulting, a
minority-owned firm that has received national recognition
for its work in public sector management consulting. Also augmenting
the work will be Class Measures, an internationally focused organization
that specializes in data analytics and school performance reviews.

Caulk’s
entry plan also includes quantitative and qualitative data collection
through school and program visits, one-on-one meetings, listening
sessions and surveys. His entry work has continued
in earnest while Caulk has been undergoing treatment following an
18-hour surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his sinuses.

He
has conducted listening sessions with community advocates in Cardinal
Valley and West-End, and surveys of principals and employees in district
support services have been completed. A comprehensive
survey of students, employees, families and community members will be
conducted in January. Caulk will also launch his listening tour in
schools and community centers then.

“I’m
anxious to be done with my treatments so that I can get back out into
schools and classrooms,” Caulk said. “I’m still engaged in the daily
operations of the district, but I miss being able
to interact with students, teachers, school staff, families and our
community.”

Here is the list of stakeholders involved in selecting the audit firms:

Batool Al Hasan, parent

Natasha Al-Suud, teacher

Heather Bell, principal

Gerry Brooks, principal

Adrielle Camuel, executive assistant

Manny Caulk, superintendent

Shelley Chatfield, staff attorney

Penny Christiansen, parent

Marilyn Clark, manager of economic development

Emily Cripps, ELL teacher

Michael Dailey, associate director

Amanda Dennis, acting director

Lisa Deffendall, spokesperson

Anne DeMott, principal

Keri Duncan, special education teacher

Jennifer Dyar, human resources director

Levi Evans, teacher

Hazel Forsythe, Equity Council representative

Jessica Frye, parent member of special education advisory council and task force

Marlene Helm, acting senior director

Jessica Hiler, FCEA representative

Lisa Hillenbrand, district ELL specialist

Dave Hoskins, principal

Rodney Jackson, finance director

Deena Jones, district GT specialists

Twanjua Jones, principal

Kate McAnelly, principal

Jimmy Meadows, school director

Sam Meaux, principal

Sandy Mefford, principal

Matt Moore, purchasing technician

Julane Mullins, budget director

Sharon Mofield-Boswell, parent

Schuronda Morton, acting school director

Leisa Pickering, University of Kentucky agency representative on the special education advisory council and task force

Bold Promises - Weak Results

What an interesting confluence of events we have.

The Obama administration recently discovered that high-stakes assessment (the same assessment promoted by the Bush (43) and Obama administrations since Day 1) leads to all kinds of abuses, not the least of which is the ridiculous amount of time schools spend on test prep. The feds say that must be severely limited to no more than two percent of instructional time.

NCLB contained tough mandates for how to turn around underperforming schools but very few turned around and achievement gaps persist. So after the failure (to put it in terms familiar to school reformers) of one Republican and one Democratic administration to deliver on its over inflated promises a new bill promises much of the same, but not by 2014 this time.

Then a conference committee passes an NCLB rewrite that appears to limit federal intervention and reinforce state control over accountability. The Every Child Succeeds Act would still come with standardized tests, but instead of the feds holding the thumbscrews, it will be the states...and they are free to do what they have always done.

Ed Trust and others said they still favor annual testing and accountability but distanced themselves from the inevitable fall out. They were not in favor of that mess. ...just the thing that caused the mess.

Last week the Council of Chief State School Officers pledged to continue their focus on accountability.

So, if things continue along this path the feds will not be responsible for too much testing. It will be the states.

This approach gives up on the (mostly Republican, circa 2005-07) notion of comparing performance among the states. Fifty states. Fifty different accountability systems. Of course it has pretty much been that way anyhow. There is now an even better argument that we should not be comparing the performance of American students with other countries. Rather, we should be comparing Finland and Hong Kong to Georgia and Kentucky....

Apparently the new ESSA is going to function much like the old NCLB. But the feds will blame the states instead of the next president.

It's hard to see how anything changes for teachers.

Every Child Achieves

On
Thursday, November 19, a potentially historic event occurred. A
bipartisan conference committee made up of members of the U.S. House and
Senate, including Congressman Brent Guthrie from Kentucky’s 2nd
District, agreed on a framework for the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), most recently known as No
Child Left Behind.
This
is a big deal for so many reasons. In fact, I was doubtful it could
happen this year. But, if things go as planned, the actual bill, known
as the Every Child Achieves Act, will be filed by the end of the month,
with a House vote the first week of December and a Senate vote shortly
thereafter.
Another
reason this is a big deal is that, if passed, it will give a lot of
accountability control back to the states. The framework includes some
significant changes and some things that will hold steady. Annual
assessment in English/language arts and mathematics for students in
grades 3-8 and once in high school remains the same as the old law. So
does testing once per grade band [sic] in science along with a few more items.
However, determining big pieces of accountability – including how we
determine our lowest five percent of schools – will be left in large
part to the states. This is both exciting and scary. We, and when I say
“we” I mean all shareholders in Kentucky, have a moral obligation to
develop a system that represents a quality education for all students.
We
do not yet know the timeline for implementation, but it will be my
intent to take our time and take deliberate steps to gather feedback
before, during, and after development of the system. I am not saying I
know how we will do this – that is why shareholder engagement and
guidance is so important.
However,
there are a few things that I think are non-negotiables. First, we
cannot back away from disaggregating the data to ensure all
students, including our at-risk and struggling students as well as our
gifted and talented students, are getting a quality education. This
cannot only be just in mathematics and reading. Another non-negotiable
for me is that the system must not narrow the curriculum in a way that
does not support the whole child or a student pursuing his or her
interest. If our goal is to ensure that every student has the
opportunity to choose his or her own direction after high school, we
must provide them with all the opportunities we can including the arts,
career-technical education, science and social studies, just to name a
few.
As I said in last week’s blog,
the opportunity gap is a major issue that must be addressed if we hope
to close the achievement gap. I do not believe we should develop a
system that looks only at outputs (state assessments) and does not look
at inputs. So, we have to consider how we will evaluate the quality of
the student experience. This means we will need to find ways to leverage
collected data and evaluation at the school level in a way that
supports good decision making for students.
Finally,
I think it is critical that we create a system that holds districts and
schools accountable, but also it should celebrate schools that are
innovative and are finding creative ways to meeting their students’
needs.
Again,
I am not saying I know how to do all of this. I have some ideas, but we
as an education community have a moral imperative to ensure a quality
education for ALL students. For me, that means that every
child that walks across the stage at graduation has the choice of where
their life will take them. I believe we have the intellectual and
compassionate capital to do this.
In
my first month on the job, I have been validated in my reasons for
wanting to be a part of the Kentucky education community. I do not know
of another state with a group of educators and partners who are more
committed to the welfare of our students than we have in Kentucky. I am
looking forward to all of us uniting and working together for all of our
children and the good of the Commonwealth.

The
article, titled "Injured at School," is a follow up to last week's
letter, "Attacked at School," which explained teachers' rights if they
are attacked at school. This week's article covers how to claim workers
compensation benefits and other benefits for teachers injured in an
assault or another incident on school property.

The letter was
placed in the mailboxes of the district's 6,000 teachers over the
weekend, according to several teachers who provided a copy of the letter
to WDRB News on Monday morning.

In the article, teachers are
instructed not to use sick time due to injuries sustained on the job,
whether they were the result of an attack or a workplace accident.
Instead, teachers are encouraged to file a workers compensation claim.
According to the article, teachers may have the legal right to
additional compensation if their injury is the result of being attacked
by a student or the parent of a student.

The article goes on to describe the types of legal assistance available to teachers who are injured on the job.

In what should by no means be a viable arrangement of words, Texas has decided not to let experts fact-check its consistently misleading if not blatantly fictional textbooks. Because as we all know, facts have a notoriously liberal bias.

Texas Board of Education Vice Chairman Thomas Ratliff, center

According to ABC News,
a mother recently complained that her child’s ninth grade geography
book referred to African slaves simply as “workers.” And how does
something like that possibly get omitted from an educational text?
Easily: The Texas Board of Education, which approves its own textbooks,
relies “on citizen review panels — often teachers, parents, business
leaders or other experts — whose members are nominated by board
members.”

And of course, should any Texan see something in a textbook that rubs them the wrong way (like absolutely any reference to the KKK or Jim Crow laws, for instance), they are welcome and encouraged to bring the issue to the attention of the board themselves.

To remedy this clear oversight, board member Thomas Ratliff suggested
getting actual academics to fact-check the textbooks. This was, of
course, rejected.

Instead, the board voted to “tweak” its system by demanding that a
majority of the already-existing review panel be made up of people with
“sufficient content expertise and experience.” This expertise, however,
is judged by none other than the education commissioner himself.

Ratliff had noted that some conservative board members
have long stocked review panels with people more concerned with ideology
than subject matter expertise. That gave rise to controversies over how
textbooks handle climate change and evolution, or how they describe the
influence biblical figures such as Moses had on America’s Founding
Fathers.

While some people, like Kathy Miller of the watchdog group Texas
Freedom Network, have blasted the board for its wildly biased decisions,
others, like Roy White, a retired Air Force pilot and head of a
conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks, had a different view
of the issue. Namely that the textbooks didn’t do enough to tie Islamic
extremism to the attacks on September 11.

But fortunately for Roy, Texas makes rewriting history to your personal tastes a breeze.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest some $34
million in cooperative initiatives designed to improve
teacher-preparation programs’ overall effectiveness.

The Seattle-based philanthropy announced the three-year grants Nov. 18.
Gates awarded the funds to five consortia through a competitive
process—a change from its former strategy of one-off grants to
individual teaching programs.

The winners will use the funding to create “transformation
centers” based on four driving principles: developing strong
partnerships with school districts; giving teacher-candidates
opportunities to refine a specific set of teaching skills; using data
for improvement and accountability; and ensuring that faculty and
mentors are effective at guiding novices into the profession.
The grantees include:

TeacherSquared, a center that currently consists mainly of
nontraditional preparation programs, including the campuses of the Relay
Graduate School of Education; Urban Teachers, which operates programs
in the District of Columbia and Baltimore; Boston-based Match Teacher
Residency; and the teaching programs offered by the Yes Prep and Aspire
charter-management organizations;

Texas Tech University, which will head the University-School
Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation National Center, or
U.S. PREP, a consortium of six universities located in Southern states;

The Massachusetts Department of Education, which will lead the
Elevate Preparation, Impact Children (EPIC) center, an effort that will
involve all 71 providers in that state; and

The National Center for Teacher Residencies, which will expand its
network of providers using a residency model of preparation that couples
a full year of student teaching with slimmed-down coursework.

The fifth grant, to TeachingWorks at the University of Michigan,
differs from the others. The group will serve as a clearinghouse for the
other grantees to share best practices, provide technical support to
each center, and supply teacher performance assessments.

Each grantee save EPIC won about $7 million; EPIC received about
$4 million. The philanthropy received about 40 applications representing
some 500 programs in all.

The Gates Foundation has also contracted with the a nonprofit
called Teacher Prep Inspection U.S., to visit each program annually and
provide feedback on progress. The group is headed by longtime
teacher-preparation analyst Edward Crowe. (The nonprofit that publishes Education Week receives support from the Gates Foundation for the coverage of college- and career-ready standards.)

Changing Practices

Gates officials said that their renewed focus on teacher
preparation builds on the foundation's philanthropy in two other areas:
teacher evaluation and academic standards.

“The timing is great because of having great consistent, high
standards in the country and more meaningful, actionable
teacher-feedback systems and some clear definitions about what
excellence in teaching looks like,” said Vicki Phillips, the Gates
Foundation’s director of college-ready programs. “Districts and prep
programs can work in ways that are just much more powerful, stronger,
and more targeted than three years ago, when we might have been doing
more shooting in the dark.”

Some of the centers plan to expand and deepen work already under
way. That’s the goal for the National Center for Teacher Residencies,
which will expand from 17 to 37 providers, five of which will be
demonstration sites that best embody the four principles around which
the new grants are oriented.

Others, such as U.S. PREP, will work to scale up practices that
have been successful elsewhere. Each of the participating universities
in that center will begin by piloting a yearlong model for student
teaching and a common tool for assessing teacher-candidate
skills—initiatives first introduced at Arizona State University.

Of the grants, potentially the most wide-reaching is
Massachusetts’. That state was selected partly because of the work it’s
done to strengthen and make more transparent its quality-control process
for teacher-preparation programs. (An Education Week investigation earlier this year found deficiencies in most states’ review systems.)

Now, under the Gates grant, Massachusetts will aim to make its
first-year teachers as good as those in their third year of teaching. It
plans to encourage its providers to use new techniques, such as
simulations to help candidates practice teaching skills in low-stakes
settings, and to help districts and programs better mentor novice
teachers.

“Teaching is a learning profession. It should be a steep climb.
But we don’t accept that a teacher can’t be ready to make an impact on
students on the first day he or she enters the classroom,” said Heather
Peske, the state’s associate commissioner for educator effectiveness.

Challenges for Faculty

That doesn’t mean the work will be easy. For one, Gates wants each
of the centers to be able to produce up to 2,500 teachers a year, a
figure that would put each of them among the largest producers of
teachers in the country.

And some of the overriding expectations, the grantees said, will
challenge longstanding ways of doing things. Many singled out as a
difficult hurdle the requirement that grantee programs do a better job
ensuring that the faculty and mentors who train the new teachers are
effective.

“Historically, the clinical faculty have not been prepared or
given professional development to work with emerging teachers in this
field. The idea you have to be really selective about who those teacher
educators are is a game changer for teacher prep,” said Anissa Listak,
the executive director of the National Center for Teacher Residencies.

“When you look across at how teacher educators are evaluated, the
primary form is student course evaluations. ... We haven’t looked at
other ways to really examine their effectiveness,” said Sarah Beal, who
will be one of the co-directors of the U.S. PREP center.

It’s an area the foundation agrees will present some tough choices.

“It really asks grantees to think very deliberately and carefully
and with data about who’s doing the work of preparing teachers,” said
Tom Stritikus, a deputy director in Gates’ college-ready division. “In a
system that has heavy faculty governance and rules around academic
freedom, those are sometimes difficult decisions and difficult moves for
deans to make.”

But the president of the American Association of Colleges
for Teacher Education said that her members welcomed the new investment.

“I certainly did not hear anyone shrink from the challenge of
competing,” said AACTE President Sharon P. Robinson. “I would hope this
round of founding will permit the Gates Foundation to be more explicit
that the traditional industry is ready for change, rather than promote
what has been a pejorative narrative about traditional providers being
impossible to change.”

As for broader impact on the teacher-prep field, that could depend
on how Gates shares what it’s learned and how flexible it is with
grantees, observers said.

“I think the idea of encouraging partnerships is good, but it’s
also important to recognize that these are often delicate endeavors,”
said David H. Monk, the dean of the college of education at Penn State
University. “Anything Gates and others can do to signal an awareness of
the complexity of measuring impact without backing away from recognizing
its importance would be a great help to the field.”

It’s not just
conservatives in Congress who still have to be sold on the No Child Left
Behind rewrite. There is still major anxiety from the left — including
the White House — about whether the compromise bill will do enough for
poor and minority kids. During a 30-minute break from the public
conference negotiations Thursday morning, negotiators worked in private
to smooth over concerns from the White House that the bill would strip
too much authority from the Education secretary, Rep. Bobby Scott and
others said. Roberto Rodriguez, deputy assistant for education to
President Barack Obama, came to the Capitol to discuss the issue and was
standing outside the conference room. "Some of us were surprised the
controversy erupted because we were working with people" throughout the
process, Scott said. But it was eventually resolved in a way critics,
including the White House, were satisfied with, he said.

The deal gives states wide berth when it comes to one of
the most contentious issues in education policy: the extent to which
test scores should be used in measuring a school's quality.

Under the new framework, states will have new leeway in deciding how
to measure a school's performance: Schools have to be measured in part
by test scores, graduation rates and English-language proficiency. But
there are also other factors that states can use to rate schools, such
as student and parent engagement and school climate. Those other
measures could account for as much as 49 percent of a school's rating
under the new law, a senior GOP aide confirmed, with measures like test
scores and graduation rates combined counting for 51 percent.

What You Need To Know About The No Child Left Behind Rewrite

After years of trying, Congress is finally on the verge of rewriting the 2002 law.

The Bush-era No Child Left
Behind education law has long been criticized as unworkable, too
punitive and in need of repair. After years of trying, Congress is
finally on the verge of rewriting the 2002 law.

House and Senate negotiators approved a
compromise framework Thursday that merges two different education bills
that cleared the House and Senate in July. Votes in the full House and
Senate are expected early next month.

The Senate bill passed this summer with overwhelming support. The House measure was more conservative, and narrowly passed.

What you need to know about the compromise measure:

----

WHY THE UPDATE?

No Child Left Behind was approved with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002.

It had lofty goals - to get all children up to
par in reading and math by 2014. But when it became clear that the goal
was unattainable, the Obama administration began to issue waivers to
states. In exchange, the states had to submit federally approved plans
to raise student performance.

Republicans and other critics accused the administration of overreach.

The law has been up for renewal since 2007, but
contentious disagreement over such things as the role of the federal
government in education stymied passage of an updated bill.

---

TESTING

No Child Left Behind required annual testing of
children in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. The compromise
measure would continue that testing requirement.

However, the bill would let states decide whether
or how to use students' performance on tests to assess teachers,
students and schools - ending federal efforts to tie those scores to
teacher evaluations.

There have been complaints for years from
teachers, parents, students, lawmakers and others about too much testing
in the nation's schools. Even the White House has suggested capping
standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time.

While the new conference bill doesn't have a mandate about testing caps, it does encourage them.

An amendment from Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat
from Colorado, says states should set caps on the total amount of time
kids spend taking tests. He said federal testing requirements have
resulted in additional layers of state and district level tests, and
some of those may be redundant or unnecessary.

"We ought to think differently about each test.
Testing for teaching and learning needs to be continuous, ongoing, and
inform a teacher's instruction and the principal's leadership," said
Bennett. "It's the testing done for accountability purposes that needs
serious re-evaluation."

---

FEDERAL ROLE IN EDUCATION

The compromise sharply reduces the federal role
in education, giving the states the authority to determine a school's
performance. There would no longer be federal sanctions for schools
judged to be underperforming. However, states would be required to
intervene in the nation's lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, high
school dropout factories and schools with persistent achievement gaps.

The Education Department also would be barred
from mandating or giving states incentives to adopt or maintain any
particular set of standards, such as the college and career-ready
curriculum guidelines known as Common Core.

Common Core has become a lightning rod for those
who sought a reduced federal role in education, even though the
standards were created by the states. The Obama administration, however,
dangled grants through its Race to the Top program for states that
adopted strong academic standards for its students.

---

PORTABILITY

Republicans had pushed the concept of portability
- allowing money to follow low-income students to public schools of
their choice. Now, those dollars remain at the struggling schools.

Democrats had fought against the concept and the
compromise bill includes only a pilot program that would allow federal
money to move with students in some school districts.

----

WHITE HOUSE

The White House had threatened to veto the bill
passed by the House in July and also expressed dissatisfaction with the
Senate's version of the bill.

After the compromise was approved on Thursday, it struck a more optimistic tone.

An administration official, speaking on condition
of anonymity, said the measure that emerged from the conference
committee was an improvement over the versions that passed the House and
Senate this summer. But the official, who could not speak publicly
because details of the bill were still under review, stopped short of
saying whether President Barack Obama would sign in it.

----

REACTION

-"Today's conference committee vote is another
encouraging step in the process to update the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, and on behalf of state chiefs, I applaud the work of the
committee," said Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of
Chief State School Officers. "The framework maintains annual assessments
and gives states additional flexibility in how to design better
accountability systems."

-"We are on our way to a new environment in
public education. The Senate-House conference report resets education
policy with a focus on student learning rather than student testing,
while maintaining resources to students with the most needs," said
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. "It creates
the potential to bring back the joy of teaching and learning and to
really prepare our kids for their future."

----

NEXT STEPS

The conference committee will have the full bill ready for lawmakers to read by Nov. 30.

The House would vote sometime that week, as early
as Dec. 2. Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who sponsored the
original Senate bill with Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, said he
wants senators to have a full week to read the bill before a vote.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity,

In the past two weeks, our
community in central Kentucky has witnessed the worst our world has to
offer. In the early hours of an otherwise peaceful and beautiful fall
morning, a seven-year veteran of our local police department was fatally
shot by a convicted felon while investigating an attempted robbery. He
died two days later and left behind a school teacher-wife and 3
year-old son. Both Daniel and Katie Ellis are proud graduates of
Eastern Kentucky University.

The outpouring of grief and
sympathy, yes - from everyone in our community - but really from across
the country and world has been absolutely astounding. Never before has a
police officer in Richmond, Kentucky, been killed in the line of duty
and I have heard residents of our fair city say that they feel as if a
portion of the innocence of our community has been lost forever. But
the tide of grief and pain was stemmed by the even more powerful
response to this senseless tragedy.
The sorrow at the loss of
Office Ellis has been overwhelming for many to bear, but the show of
support and good has been equally unfathomable. People who did not know
Officer Ellis personally stood in line for hours to pass respects at
the visitation. Flowers and messages of condolence and support streamed
in from all over, including a beautiful arrangement and card from the
New York Yankees. Officer Ellis' squad car, parked in front of the
Richmond Police department, had an enormous American flag hanging
overhead from a fire truck ladder while flowers and notes of sympathy
were placed atop and all around the vehicle.

The memorial
service - held at our Alumni Coliseum on campus - was attended by over
7,000 people and broadcast live on local television. Following the
service, the procession of police vehicles behind the hearse stretched
for over twelve miles as it wound its way to Officer Ellis' final
resting place in south central Kentucky. Common citizens, safety
personnel, school children - thousands of people - lined the highway and
state roads to pay their respects as this line of traffic passed in
solemn silence. I have never witnessed anything quite like it in my
life.

Days later, the news and horror broke upon the world of
the carefully-planned and meticulously-executed attacks on innocent
civilians in Paris leaving hundreds dead and wounded in the City of
Lights. As details emerged from the orchestrated massacres, we recoiled
at the "passionate intensity" unleashed by those whose motivation to do
such acts will forever escape me.

As was the case with Officer
Ellis and the public response, I have marveled as the world has risen
together in support of France and her people. My older brother, Steve
Benson, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Arizona Republic.
His pen captured the moment perfectly as he portrayed our own Statue
of Liberty - a gift from France to celebrate America's independence -
descending from her perch and wading into the Atlantic to come to
France's defense as the Paris skyline is engulfed in flames and smoke.

Yeats
wrote his famous "The Second Coming" poem in 1920, just as the world,
still reeling from the War to End All Wars, arose from a conflict unlike
anything anyone had ever experienced. Technology had far surpassed the
military stratagems and techniques still utilized from the 19th
century. The resulting carnage wiped out entire generations of young
and promising citizens from both sides of the global struggle. From
Yeats' view, the ceremony of innocence had been completely drowned,
ushering in an age where the best lack all conviction.

What is so
difficult to understand is why it takes unthinkable tragedy to galvanize
communities and countries against the anarchy "loosed upon the world"
at moments such as these.

This need not be the case. If the
events in Richmond, Kentucky, and Paris, France, have served any purpose
for those who have witnessed them, it is to compel all of us to
remember the words of Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

A special edition action letter about threatening and violent
behavior by students in Jefferson County Public Schools is being sent
out to all of the district's teachers by the Jefferson County Teachers
Association.

The letter, which started arriving in teacher
mailboxes Tuesday, is entitled "Attacked at School" and is part one of
two parts written by Don Meade and Tom Schulz, two attorneys who
represent JCTA and its members.

"There is nothing more frightening
to a classroom teacher than to be trapped in a situation with a student
who has become threatening or violent against the teacher or other
students," the letter reads. "Teachers can be injured while managing
disruptive behavior or when aggression is directed against them."

JCTA president Brent McKim told WDRB News
on Wednesday the purpose of this article is to explain the rights,
responsibilities and options that "all teacher need to know in order to
protect themselves."

In the letter, JCTA says "experience has
shown that teachers must be assertive about their rights to be protected
in assault situations, to counter the natural tendency of principals
and the district to not involve law enforcement and often the media."

Teachers
are advised to follow the district's procedures by handling the
situation first with the principal whenever possible. It then describes
what to do if the teacher isn't satisfied with the principal's
response:

"In emergency situations or
where the principal has demonstrated a disregard for teacher protection,
you have the legal right to call 911 and ask for police assistance if
under attack or injured by the assault of a student."

The letter
states that teachers have the right to call police even if the principal
refuses to do so and goes on to say they can press charges against the
student.

Last week Superintendent Donna Hargens wrote an editorial piece saying
the district supports its teachers and has implemented a Positive
Behavioral Intervention and Support System (PBIS), which is taking the
most positive approach to addressing problem behaviors. She also said
the district surveyed its teachers, and 92 percent of them said they
felt safe and secure in the classroom.

Hargens could not be reached for immediate comment about the JCTA letter on Wednesday.

[A recent] Tuesday was Election Day in Dallas,
and one of the most contentious issues citywide involved an ostensibly
boring topic: school bonds. Things got particularly heated in the
wealthy enclave of Highland Park, where the vote over a $361 million
bond has provoked a big debate over the future of Dallas. It wasn’t just
about the enormous price tag on the bond package, which supporters said
was necessary to raze and rebuild three of the 7,000-student district’s
elementary schools, renovate a fourth, and buy land to add a fifth
elementary school to the at-capacity district, as well as renovating the
schools for the upper grades.

At the moment, Highland Park’s popular schools are perilously overcrowded,
with many classes in the district exceeding the state limit for number
of students per class. The new construction, in addition to adding more
classrooms, would preserve much-needed green space and bring more
parking to the landlocked schools, as well as update their technological
infrastructure. (Two of the elementary schools were built in the 1920s,
another in 1949. The fourth was built in 1914 and reopened in 1951. So—a long time ago.)

The bond passed by 10 points—55 to 45 percent, a difference of about
800 votes. But a dark specter loomed over the run-up to the vote, and
what appeared to be these totally reasonable expansion proposals.

According to anonymous emails that circulated in advance of the election,
if the bond passed and the schools increased in size, Section 8 housing
could spring up in the sliver of Dallas that’s part of the Highland
Park Independent School District. And if that happens (spoiler alert: it
won’t), who even knows what type of riffraff will crawl into
the high-performing, affluent, and overwhelmingly white, schools:
“non-English-speaking” students from all over Latin America, Middle
Eastern refugees, assorted other low-income scum. As one of the emails
put it, “Diversity is an innocuous sounding method of diluting
excellence.”

“What has captured people’s attention is that the Highland Park
School District overlays Highland Park,” Cal Jillson, a political
science professor at Southern Methodist University, told me, “but it
extends just a little bit into Dallas, so the scare tactic is that in
that little bit of Dallas, there will be low-income apartments with all
kinds of people we don’t know, including potentially Syrian jihadis,
people crawling out of Mexico across the border all the way to Dallas
with their automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, going into
those apartments and sending their kids into these schools. This is
ludicrous on its face, but in a campaign it raises all sorts of concerns
about the dilution of the Highland Park School District.”

To understand the context of this bond election requires some
background on Highland Park and University Park (where SMU and the
George W. Bush Library are located), the two adjacent minicities within
Dallas that are collectively known as the Park Cities. The Park Cities
are two things above all else: rich and white. Really, really white: As
of the last census, Highland Park, the more exclusive of the Park
Cities, was 94 percent white and .5 percent black. The city surrounding
it, meanwhile, is 42 percent Hispanic and 25 percent black. As for
Highland Park, well, it welcomed its first black homeowner in 2003. (It is worth clicking on this link
just for the incredible lede from one local article marking the
milestone: “Guess who’s coming to dinner … and staying for a while?”)

Illustrious residents of Highland Park, where the average home sale in 2013 was $1.65 million,
include Ross Perot Jr., Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, real estate
developer Harlan Crow (a prominent Marco Rubio supporter who owns two
original paintings by Adolf Hitler and a signed copy of Mein Kampf), and Gold’s Gym and Omni Hotels founder Robert Rowling, another heavy-hitting Republican donor. These last two residents are not outliers in this extremely Republican area. From a Mother Jonespiece on the inner-city garden suburb:

Among the two-dozen zip codes that donated the most money to
candidates and political parties [in 2010], 75205 [Highland Park] gave
the highest share—77 percent—to Republicans. … It also gave Republicans
more hard cash, $2.4 million, than all but four other zips nationwide.

The Park Cities are superattractive to the super-rich because, while
wealthy and elitist, they’re not suburbs in the traditional sense.
They’re smack in the middle of the city, just three miles north of
downtown Dallas (and for any non-Texans out there, that’s nothing),
surrounded on all four sides by the big, dirty, diverse city.

“If you look at a map of Dallas, the Park Cities are cut right out of
the middle,” Jillson, the SMU professor, told me. They were part of
Dallas’ “first wave of suburbanization, a move out away from the center
of the city with all of its diverse population, to provide a near-in
exclusive bigger-lot kind of platting for the elite.”

“Highland Park is kind of like a castle with a moat,” said Michael Phillips, the author of White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841–2001. “The Park Cities were where the wealthiest of Dallas retreated in the beginning of the 20th
century, when you saw the first actual immigration in Dallas. It wasn’t
at all comparable to what you have in the Northeast, but for the first
time you begin to have a noticeable Jewish population, Italian
residents, Eastern Europeans. This was 20 years before the Ku Klux Klan
took over the city, and all that nativist anxiety was just beginning to
brew when Highland Park was founded” in 1907.

Another big attraction of the Park Cities has always been its
separate-but-superior school district, which is 85 percent white, 6
percent Asian, 4 percent Hispanic, 2 percent multirace, and 3 percent
other and consists of four (possibly soon-to-be five) elementary
schools, one intermediate school, one middle school, and one high
school. Highland Park High School has an estimable 99 percent graduation
rate. And, not coincidentally, while 130,780 out of the 159,487 students in Dallas Independent School District qualified as economically disadvantaged in the 2013–14 school year, zero of the 7,012 students in HPISD did.

But if Highland Park largely remains, according to White Metropolis,
"a refuge from an increasingly diverse city," the Dallas that surrounds
the Park Cities on all four sides is changing at a dizzying pace. The
Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex is one of the fastest-growing regions in the
country. Between 2000 and 2010, the Asian population of the metroplex
and near-in suburbs more than doubled; it’s no accident of historythat Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for his clock-bomb in Irving, about a 20-minute drive from central Dallas.

All these demographic drifts came to the forefront of the vote over school-improvement costs.

The anti-bond emails
did a fine job of ratcheting up fears of the certain apocalypse that
would follow the bond’s passage: “Most people think the bond is just
about building new schools but there is MUCH more to it, including section 8 housing”
[emphasis theirs]. What follows is a complicated scheme in which the
already overcrowded schools of HPISD become bigger, poorer, and—scariest
of all—darker. And you’ll never guess who is ultimately
engineering this takeover: Barack Obama himself! “The Obama
administration is determined to move low-income families into affluent
cities and suburbs at virtually any cost,” reads one email.

Foundations for the Future, the pro-bond political action committee—yes, aPAC for a school-bond election—debunked these claims not with ridicule but with the logic of the market.

Affordable housing is typically built where land costs
between $10-20 per square foot. In HPISD, land costs more than $100 per
square foot. No government subsidies can make it profitable to pay the
high land costs notable in HPISD, construct housing, and then rent to
low-income tenants. There are no Section 8 apartments in Texas on land
that costs even a quarter of what the North Park Gardens is worth.

Despite the scare tactics, the bond was always likely to pass
because, as Phillips put it, “The people in Highland Park tend to be
very pragmatic, and they want the best schools for their kids. The
behavior of their kids in these schools may show a lack of
sophistication in some ways, but everyone there is very commercially
oriented, very bottom line-oriented.”

Jillson at SMU agreed. Texas historically underfunds its public schools—“they were 49th in the nation in per-capita student funding in 2012, and while it’s kicked up a little bit to 38th,
that’s sort of its natural position,” just a hair above the Deep
South—and the parents of HPISD knew that the district needed the money:
“The wealthier the district, the more likely you are to be sure your
schools have everything, and a bond is an opportunity to do that without
having your excess funds creamed off for other districts.”

Laura Moser, a writer for Slate's Schooled project, has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Washingtonian.

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KSN&C is intended to be a place for well-reasoned civil discourse...not to suggest that we don’t appreciate the witty retort or pithy observation. Have at it. But we do not invite the anonymous flaming too often found in social media these days. This is a destination for folks to state your name and speak your piece.

It is important to note that, while the Moderator serves as Faculty Regent for Eastern Kentucky University, all comments offered by the Moderator on KSN&C are his own opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of the Board of Regents, the university administration, faculty, or any members of the university community.

On KSN&C, all authors are responsible for their own comments. See full disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

Why This Blog?

So far as we know, we only get one lifetime. So, when I "retired" in 2004, after 31-years in public education I wanted to do something different. I wanted to teach, write and become a student again. I have since spent a decade in higher ed.

I have listened to so many commentaries over the years about what should be done to improve Kentucky's schools - written largely by folks who have never tried to manage a classroom, run a school, or close an achievement gap. I came to believe that I might have something to offer.

I moved, in 1985, from suburban northern Kentucky to what was then the state’s flagship district - Fayette County. I have had a unique set of experiences to accompany my journey through KERA’s implementation. I have seen children grow to graduate and lead successful lives. I have seen them go to jail and I have seen them die. I have been amazed by brilliant teachers, dismayed by impassive bureaucrats, disappointed by politicians and uplifted by some of Kentucky’s finest school children. When I am not complaining about it, I will attest that public school administration is critically important work.

Democracy is run by those who show up. In our system of government every citizen has a voice, but only if they choose to use it.

This blog is totally independent; not supported or sponsored by any institution or political organization. I will make every effort to fully cite (or link to) my sources. Please address any concerns to the author.

On the campaign trail...with my wife Rita

An action shot: The Principal...as a much younger man.

Faculty Senate Chair

Serving as Mace Bearer during the Inauguration of Michael T. Benson as EKU's 12th president.

Teaching

EDF 203 in EKU's one-room schoolhouse.

Professin'

Lecturing on the history of Berea College to Berea faculty and staff, 2014.

Faculty Regent

One in a long series of meetings. 2016

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